Thoughts, fiction, photography…located slightly to the left of reality

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I’ve been having random fights with my PC. It likes to crash when I’m not looking. About 2 weeks ago – it crashed and stayed crashed.

I blame Windows 10. All this nonsense started when Microsoft did a stealth update on my computer.

Did I ask for Windows 10? No – seeing though every time the little prompt came up –

FREE UPGRADE – YOU KNOW YOU WANT THIS!!!!

I told the damn computer, No, I really, REALLY don’t want this.

I guess Microsoft thought they knew best, because one night, when the world was quiet and zzzz’s were being issued from the bedrooms upstairs…those sneaky little f**kers slapped 10 into my 6 year old PC without so much as a by-your-leave.

electronic rape, anyone?

I was perfectly OK with the Windows 7 OS that came with the PC – although, to be perfectly honest, XP was my favorite out of the Microsoft bunch.

10. Really. Sucks. Not only do you have to deal with a perky, bubbly Cortana down on the left corner of the screen chirping “Ask me ANYTHING!”, she continually suggests that the Edge browser she’s tied to is far superior to the Firefox browser I’ve been running for 5 years.

She regularly disses Chrome, too…

Edge sucks more than Windows 10 and Internet Explorer combined.

Currently, I’m stuck on a little laptop…yet another Windows product, but a non-crashing one.

The problem with my laptop? It doesn’t have any of my Excel workbooks (Keto & Chainmaille), any of my Word documents, Photoshop, or any of my images.

6 years of serious/semi-serious/goofy photo work – all stuck in a PC that my Eldest is still working on getting back to running status. So far, he’s managed to remove 10, and reinstall 7 – but he still needs to update some of the drivers in the thing…

Gawd…I miss my image files…

So I’m gonna share out some of my favorites which are stuck in this WordPress storage site – for nostalgia…

It’s Friday again…you know what that means…time to head on over to Flash!Friday for another round of short fiction…

The photographer in me absolutely LOVES the shot she’s chosen for this week – there’s a lot of color and vibrancy to it – and the bokeh technique (very narrow depth of field and quick shutter speeds with adequate light) is one of my personal favorites. Here’s one of my first experiments with bokeh – and while a Basilisk is nowhere in the same family as the Chinese Dragon given to us in the Flash challenge, the technique to capture the shot is the same.

Onward! To Flash Fiction~

Who Mourns the Dragon?

160 words

At every corner, wall and window, I am assaulted with images of my brethren. Gaudy splashes of eye-watering clashing colors smeared thick on cheap paper mâché, the disfigured skulls festooned with ribbon and lace are obscene in their cheerfulness. Disgusting how my race has been so distorted by those victorious in the war they initiated.

One of my dragon-etched vases.

Sheep’s clothing firmly in place, I settle at an empty bench in the square, watching the genocidal maniacs celebrate the annihilation of my species.

Tiny heads garnish the table before me, and I call to mind the terrible tableau of our children slaughtered in their creche. The blood, the torn bodies, all the promise of our species broken on the bones of the Earth. It’s one image I will obsessively visualize until I inevitably pass into dust. My memories are the only true recounting of our customs, passions, deep familial bonds, heritage, and, lastly, our extinction.

This holiday season, we’re throwing you a photo challenge color curveball. Many of us around the world are ensconced in the holiday season. You may be surrounded with blue and silver if you’re celebrating Hanukkah; black, red, and green, if you’re celebrating Kwanzaa; or festooned with reds and greens if Christmas is coming to your house. With this week’s challenge, show us what yellow means to you.

There’s a special story behind this very yellow sunrise, that I’m going to share today.

Many years back, I hated cameras. They were the very demon of artistic people everywhere. I so completely eschewed cameras, that the only photos in existence of my kids growing up are ones taken by other family members. I did not save, request, or otherwise have any pictures taken.

I do have a few shots, professionally done, of the kids in their formative years…as well as the dreaded school photos – so I wasn’t COMPLETELY anti-image…just anti-layperson-image.

My mother has boxes and albums and boxes and albums and boxes of photos. Every Christmas, Birthday, Halloween, Reunion, Wedding, Funeral, and Vacation was recorded with mathematical precision. Every gift was Kodachromed. Every pumpkin carved and outfit created was captured for posterity. Every wedding lineup snapped, every sunburn documented.

And 90% of these were the same – Look here, hold up the item you just tore the wrapping paper off of, and smile for the camera!

Line up, tall ones in the back, short ones in the front – Dang-it, Karl! I can’t see your face! Anne, stop putting bunny ears in back of your sister! Now everyone smile and say “Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese!”

To this day, I still HATE stilted, posed shots…so much so, that I can’t pose a person or compose a shot with a group without having it look extremely wooden. My childhood disgust at such cookie-cutter imagery is transferred through the electronic medium.

A few years before Dawn was photographed, I was forced at semi-gunpoint to procure a digital point & shoot for some stuff I was trying to sell on Ebay. In defense of the money I was spending on this thing…I bought one with a bright pink plastic housing, so the husband wouldn’t take it, make it his own, and then lose it somewhere within the confines of the accumulated junk in our house.

The Pink Menace took the product pictures as requested, then was promptly banished to my sock drawer.

I dug the Pink Menace out again when I took a vacation by myself, and took one of my youngest son’s army dudes along. I’ll admit – taking the little plastic army dude with me, posing him, and taking shots was fun…and got me some strange looks.

No…I am NOT a ‘foodie.’ Sorry to disappoint. I just figured that my youngest would appreciate that I was feeding Army Dude on our vacation.

After I moved out on my own, the Pink Menace came with me…a stow-a-way sandwiched between pairs of argyles. After the move, my mom requested pictures of what the new living space looked like, as well as Waukesha’s current look, about the same time I organized my socks. Finding the Pink Menace was considered a happy coincidence.

I wandered about that winter, took shots of the downtown area, my building, and my tiny shoebox-in-the-sky studio apartment. Duly posted them on Facebook so everyone and sundry could have a look. The Pink Menace was not banished back to the sock drawer, but rather had earned a space on top of the dresser.

In the spring, I started walking the Riverwalk behind my building. A studio apartment is, first and foremost, small. Fun happens outside the limited space. Lucky for me, my studio was in the heart of downtown Waukesha, and there was a lot of fun stuff just outside my door.

For yucks, I carried the Pink Menace, and shot off a few captures of the ducks, the flora, the river, etc. It started to feel less of a burden, and more natural, to carry a camera. The Pink Menace was worming its way into my heart.

Then came the Dawn shot. It wasn’t the one I went looking for (that one didn’t turn out) but it was the one I found…or it found me.

Once I pulled that image up on my computer, and saw what I’d captured, straight out of the camera…well…let’s just say the Pink Menace was no longer so named.

I found I had a photographic eye…and that I could capture art…even with a cheap plastic point & shoot camera.